Whoa. http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/ws/eBayISAPI....;item=5948347258&rd=1&ssPageName=WD1V Just a little out of my price range. :-( (found through Kyuusaku's eBay link for the VB game)
Aha! i wanted to start a thread on this too, i didn't whanted to go off-topic in the ''VB'' thread. Anyway, i'm very curious about this thing, i'm a collector and love to hear about those things, but i never heard of such a thing. This seems to be the ultimate collector thing you could have (hell, there's only 2 cosmos proto with ''something'' in it!) , am i right? anyway, i would like to hear more about it, what's with those hologram things? Were it was suposed to be? on a cartrige or in gameplay? i would like to expand my knowledge. :-D
OK then. Well, I'll let Atari explain first..... I'll give you a little info from what Dan Kramer said on the topic.... All the software was in the machine, the "cart" only held the hologram and used a set of plastic keys to load the correct game inside the machine. Only the player looking directly into the lens was able to see anything, or someone looking over their shoulder. The console was going to be $100 and the games $10 - the point here is they make a profit on holograms, but make it look cheaper than a $30 game cart for other video games. This was the first commercially produced hologram, researched in Atari for several years. The best way to view the hologram is with a high density incandescent light source (e.g. slide projector or strong daylight). It responds well against a dark background. Unfortunately, it is EXTREMELY susceptible to fingerprints and air exposure. Atari staff all saw it as a joke. And here's a pic of my hologram, with a PC screw to indicate scale. The flash picked out the hologram quite well.
I forgot to mention - Superman and Asteroids are the only holograms available... in numbers, anyway. I believe there are some one-of-a-kind games!
I think it had very primitive dot matrix graphics, ala the Microvision. Think of one of those crappy "Block Zone" type games, but worse than that. Like the graphics are made up of huge lego bricks. Impressive for 1979 though.
